


Stay in the Moment

by messitallup



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: AND THEN STOPPED FEELING QUITE SO CRAP, Angst and Fluff, Anyways, Dubious Ethics, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Frankie's being a dipshit, Gee's being overprotective, HAPPY ENDINGS OKAY, I JUST STARTED THIS FEELING CRAP, I PROMISE THERE IS HAPPINESS, M/M, Of Frank, SO MADE IT HAPPIER?, Suicidal Thoughts and Intentions, at some point tonight, gonna stop that now, idek at this point, should probably sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messitallup/pseuds/messitallup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard gets pushed into his marriage with Lindsey as a way to protect Frank.<br/>This is the product of the marriage in a single letter and the after-effects of that letter.</p><p>(Promise it isn't a suicide note. Also, I have nothing against Lyn-z, personally I think she's fucking brilliant and awesome and yeah, small girl crush. So I'm sorry she's portrayed as a bitch, she isn't really like this.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay in the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing against any of the MCR wives. As stated in the intro, they're all awesome.  
> If your name(s) (as in full names, not if you just happen to be called Lindsey or Gerard or something) appear in the character list, people, be sensible and click the back button. You don't want to see what my mind comes up with when I'm in a shitty mood.  
> Hey again? I'm back? Sort of? Anyways, apology fic for not writing anything in my other series (but I kind of feel that I should apologise for this fic bc wow depressing right?), but I know how I want to end the other series but everything's coming out forced and I want it to be a really good ending.  
> Anyways, this is written for my friend, Livi, who's in a seriously bad place right now, I miss you shit loads and I hope things look up for you. Love you bubs.  
> Hope everyone else is okay.  
> If you have any of the below feelings or intentions you should talk to someone. Sometimes that's the hardest thing to do, and I know about it okay. Surround yourself with people who love you for who you are and never let go of that love.  
> Trigger warnings for depression, suicidal thoughts and tendencies (not carry it out though), implied dub con sex and explicit dub con marriage.  
> This is not an excuse to blackmail band members into marrying you, I know they're all really hot, but restrain yourselves guys.  
> Love  
> D x

Some days it becomes too much for me. To cope with, to live with.

Most days it crushes me. Like bricks falling from a building, like someone sitting on your chest, a hand closing around your heart.

Occasionally, it overwhelms me. I can’t breathe, think, sometimes I can’t even find the energy to get out of bed.

I simply exist. Nothing anyone can do will ever change this.

I go out at night when everybody’s asleep, like the dead, and I drink. In my office, in my kitchen, in bars, clubs, back-alleys, outside shops, in the street.

Most nights I fall asleep on the curb, restless, dirty, dark sleep, and crawl back into bed in the early hours of the morning, as the hot, merciless sun drags itself over the horizon and buries itself in the in unforgiving sky. Before anyone can wake and notice my small, meaningless absence.

I brush my teeth and sway myself over to bed. Maybe sit there for the remainder of the morning, long slow minutes clawing past. Or I’ll slowly sink into a sleep so dark, with nightmares so deep, they smother my entire existence.

I wonder what will kill me first; my nightmares, or my waking thoughts, my fracturing psyche splintering into spines full of self-hate. My mind nurtures thoughts so horrifying, and urges so destructive I wonder how I am still here.

I then I remember him. How wonderful, and beautiful, even for a second or two – a glancing moment in the breeze – how perfect I felt. No, not perfect – just at peace with myself.

How even if the sun would glare down in hatred and disgust, the stars seemed glance in my direction with affection. How every time he looked at my broken body, holding a broken soul, I would feel not so ruined. How my worn-out heart would kick-start from its normal lethargic pace.

Fragmented pieces would rush together and I would feel as close to whole as I had, and would in years.

Sometimes those memories were enough to make me put down the bottle of whatever my chosen drink was. Unfortunately more than not it wasn’t.

And then I remember how she came along, and tore apart everything – threatening to out me and him to everyone. How scared I was for him. How she made me hurt him, and us, beyond repair. And when she had demanded I marry her, just to keep his secret (and mine) I did. She said she would tell the world. I knew we weren’t ready for that. I had been, he hadn’t.

And how when she demanded we get pregnant, I complied. For him. For his happiness. He hadn’t been ready to have his deepest secret spread over tabloids.

By that point, it was too late to save even our friendship, discussions turned into arguments, shows turned into battlegrounds.

In the end, I couldn’t even save the band.

We all met up one day, the new studio we had built to symbolise a new start still smelt like drying paint, grey clouds threatened rain behind the new windows.

Ray had shaken his head first, saying he couldn’t do this anymore. He had backed out of the room slowly, saying the band was dying and there was nothing we could do to save it. We should let it wither and die. We shouldn’t put ourselves through this. Mikey’s eyes stayed glued to the ground, and mine opposingly locked on the ceiling, hoping and praying it hadn’t come to this. No one said a word. We all walked out and never went back.

Our individual lawyers sorted out most of the deeds and legalised the split. The new studio went to Frank and whatever band he cooked up next, the label posted some fake-as-shit sign off to the fans the day after the final studio meet, and I remember shuffling through the finished and half-finished songs that were meant to have gone on our newest record. After listening to them, track by track, I wiped them all from the computers, deleting all traces of them from history.

I remember writing some bullshit cover-up story on twitter about a bird and new beginnings and then emptiness for months. Every so often our PRs would make us all tweet each other, to keep up appearances, but in reality outside of that, we couldn’t face each other.

I saw my brother’s relationship with the women he loved crash and burn out, from afar I saw Frank spiral into anger. Ray stayed radio silent.

I couldn’t bare it. I couldn’t look at any of the fans that had approached me in the face. I lied to them. I didn’t help people, no matter what they said. I poisoned everything.

Bandit was the only joy in my life: for her I could pretend to be happy. For her, I was the closest to happiness I had been without him in a long time.

I wouldn’t have survived without my little B.

And then I caught _her_ with someone else, and that wasn’t fair. I was so angry. If I couldn’t have him, how could she have both of us? Me and that man she had been with, in the bed I had paid for. She replied because she held all the cards and I had nothing without her. Because what I had done was disgusting, and how I wasn’t playing the perfect husband so she had to feel loved from someone else. Someone who was a real man.

I holed myself up in my office; I created new music, funnelling my despair into the creation of my new solo album. But instead of venting my depression, it only made it multiply more.  
I realised the album, but no tour followed. I could barely heave myself out of bed in the mornings. How was I supposed to tour for months consecutively, holed up alone in a tour bus for days by myself without my band to distract me? To leave Bandit with _her_ for even a day, risking the chance that she would turn Bandit against me? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

One night I found myself in my bathroom holding red and blue pills in my hand, a glass of water in another, just like in a song I once wrote.  
Bandit saved my again that night; she knocked on the door, peering innocently into the room and prolonged the inevitable.

But I kept finding myself in those situations; with knives in my hands, shining and sharp, walking over bridges with gushing streams of blue, brown and grey below them, a busy road with cars blurring creating a rainbow of colour that beckoned me forward.

The urges paralyzed me at times, freezing over my body in a chill so deep, my core was encased in ice layered over ice. Who would care? He wouldn’t, he had moved on. She wouldn’t, she never cared, I was her trophy husband to her, something she had won. Not a person. My brother wouldn’t, he was too busy dealing with his degrading marriage, court cases for the divorces and preparing for the new baby. Ray? No. He had only stuck around for the music, he knew without it I was nothing. Useless.

I slowly stopped eating. I picked more and more fights with her. My _wife_. What a sick, sick joke.

And then one day, her bags were packed, a glossy red convertible car outside and her lover-plaything waiting for her as she lugged her bags out to him. I stood in the drive, watched her leave, Bandit at my side.

Bandit first asked where mummy was going, the begged, implored, and then finally cried. She had never cried before. Not even as a baby. I had never hated her more than I did now, knowing she had made my baby girl cry. My only joy.

Bandit ran after the car, as it flashed red as blood, blurring past. As fast as her little legs would carry her.

She had tripped over half way down the street when the car rounded the corner. Her scraped up knees and bruised hands painting the pavement. Blood dripped from her knees, staining her tights bright red, her tears wetting her face.

I ran over to her, picked her up as she screamed at me. It was all my fault, she had screamed at me. I felt worse than ever.

Afterwards, she had come downstairs, plasters on her knees, and her hair wet from her bath, and she crawled into my lap and buried her face into my neck murmuring out that she didn’t mean it, that she loved me. I was her dad, and she loved me.

Bandit looked up at me with eyes like her mother’s, full of tears and whispered to me, asking if I would leave her too, if it was her fault. I replied in similarly quiet tones that I would not, I loved her too much. Nothing she would ever do would ever stop that. It wasn’t her fault, sometimes people just fell out of love and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

I refrained to mention that there had never been any love in the first place.

I few days later, gossip magazines showed up with articles of my sordid love-affair with him. I hid them from Bandit.

I had been trying so hard to move on, to leave that section of my past behind me. Another near-fatal addiction, but I couldn’t. Not with reminders of what had happened popping up all over the place.

He stayed voiceless on the matter. Reporters hounded us both day and night. I couldn’t log onto any of my social medias without reminders splattered all over my notifications. I had fucked up so badly and dragged the people I had been trying to protect into it.

Until one day, I saw one single tweet that changed everything. One single line, six words.

_@gerardway did you ever love him?_

_@Listen_Up yes. I’m not sure there’s a point where I didn’t._

Colour slowly seeped back into the world, I could breathe almost freely. It was out there and I couldn’t take it back.

That night, I sat with Bandit as she fell asleep, breathing slowing as she relaxed. I stayed well past the point when I knew she was asleep, her face painted with a slight smile as she dreamed. That day, I stopped drinking. And I haven’t touched another bottle since.

I now am writing this as a final say in this chapter. Whoever reads this? Hold onto what you love, because love it a fleeting thing, passing like a ghost in the summer breeze. When real love comes along, grab hold of it. Flaunt it to the world, be at peace with yourself. Never let it become your weakness; allow it to strengthen you, to forgive you for all the wrong you have done in the past.

Yours’ most sincerely,  
Gerard

***

The sun slithered into the sky, my head pounded.

Bandit was ill, so naturally I was too. She had caught it off one of the kids in her year and I, in turn, had caught it off her.

“Daddy! I’m gonna be sick!”

I heard footstep pound towards the loo, and I sprinted after them, reaching her just in time and holding her hair back as she retched into the toilet, emptying what little breakfast she had had down into the loo.

I rubbed little circles onto her back as her muscles shook and she quivered over the toilet bowl.  
“Don’t worry, dad’s here. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“Gerard, don’t be stupid, let me help her, you look like you’re about to fall over!” Donna pushed her way past me to reach for my daughter, taking my place behind her, “Get back to bed before you start being sick too!”

My mum had come over as soon as she heard B had been sick, and I that was too. She said she had wanted to help, and that she knew dealing with sick children when you’re ill yourself was horrible.

She had been visiting regularly after the split between me and Lindsay, probably expecting me to  crack and have a psychotic break. But if anything, I felt better than I had in a long time. She had understood that after I had explained the situation I had been in to her with Lindsey and Frank and then Bandit, but she still came over every weekend and when I needed help with B.

I suddenly felt faint, my vision spinning and I nodded and turned, stumbling up the stairs towards my bedroom.  
I heard B still retching downstairs, but Donna’s soothing voice reassured me and I edged back into bed and slunk into a fevered sleep, my dreams empty and black. Not peaceful, but close enough.

I woke to murmuring voices outside in the hall and my stomach turning over sickeningly. Bandit was snoring fitfully in a room next to mine, I could hear her through the wall.

I staggered my way to the door, falling on the handle and heaving it open. Donna stood in the hallway, just above the stairs with my brother, who looked ashamedly at the floor, and two others.

They looked up at the sound of the door opening, and I caught a glimpse of the two unknown faces. He was there, Frank, looking disgusted, and Ray, who looked mortified.

“Gerard? Aren’t you meant to be asleep?” Donna asked, face suddenly lined with concern where disapproval had just been seconds before as she looked me up and down. I felt my stomach churn again, reminding me of why I had woken up in the first place.

“Shit,” I forced out, took one look at the group huddled on the stairs, staring at me and tore down the hallway to the closest bathroom, threw up the toilet seat and all but vomited up my stomach lining, my sick turning green as the acid in my stomach came up after everything else in my stomach had been forced up and out of my mouth. Once I had finished I nearly started being sick again purely due to the stench that penetrated the room. Sweat had pooled down my back and dampened my t-shirt. Beads of it lined my forehead and soaked my hair.

As I came back to myself, I felt someone behind me, kneeling and rubbing soothing circles onto my back as I crouched over the loo and trembled, muscles aching with exhaustion.

“Shush, it’s gonna be okay,” came a voice from behind me, unknowingly mirroring the words I had spoken earlier. “I’m so sorry, it’s all going to be okay, I promise you.”

Masculine arms wrapped around my body and I felt three other pairs of eyes follow us as Frank carried me back to the bedroom and lowered me onto the bed.

“I hold to what I said earlier: get out. All of you,” I heard Donna say through my delirium, “He is my priority and you’ve all fucked up more than once in regard to him, Mikey especially. Ignoring your own brother when he needs you most? That’s disgraceful. You know he would’ve dropped everything to help you if the situation had been reversed.” Donna’s normally passive voice was laced with venom towards her youngest son.

I had a vague recollection of the emails, long and imploring, that I had sent to Mikey. Back when I thought taking my own life had been the answer. Most of them had been begging Mikey for his help. He never replied. Not once. To this day I don’t even think he looked at the emails.

“I didn’t think it was this serious! Fuck, mum! If I could go back and change it I would!” Mikey shouted back.

“Wishing isn’t going to change anything,” Donna shot back. The voice were starting to blur together again as I faded and fell through nothing.

“Neither is shouting. We’ll leave Mrs Way. I’m sorry for the damage we’ve caused,” Ray said stiffly, he had never been one for words.

I remembered him trying to ask Christy out, it had been hilarious at the time. In the end, she had shot him one stern look and grabbed the back of his neck and pressed her lips to his. It had been hilarious at the time. I giggled. Or at least I thought I did.

I heard Donna sigh in a worried manner and felt someone press a whisper of a kiss to my lips before they said under their breath, “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m not letting you go again okay.”

For the first time in years, I fell asleep smiling.

 ***

The morning came, relentless as ever. I swung out of bed, the previous night only a shadow and blur in my head.

Luckily, the bug had nearly gone. I remembered being sick and thought, as I entered the bathroom, that I must have puked most of it up last night if the smell that hung in air was anything to go by.

“Honey, you up?” Mum whisper-shouted up the stairs, obviously not wanting to wake up B, who I could still here snoring lightly through the open door. Donna’s voice was laced with concern, and I stuck the toothbrush I had been fiddling with in my mouth wipe out the absolutely rank taste of vomit as I padded downstairs.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine mum,” I sighed, leaning against the bannister. Sure, I was tired, but in a ‘I’m getting over this bug’ kind of way, not in a ‘ugh, too sick to move’ sense. I stood there, brushing my teeth, looking down at mum and got a sense of déjà vu. I remembered this scene playing out almost exactly almost 20 years ago, one of the times when I had been off ‘sick’ as a teenager (I had actually just been severely hungover). Some things never change, and mum would always be my mum.

“Okay, I have to get back now, I’ll phone this evening.” Her eyes darted around my face, finally looking into my eyes, “You’ll both be okay without me?”  
“Yes mum, I’m sure we’ll be fine for five days, until next weekend,” I said sarcastically, through the toothpaste in my mouth, before moving forward to hug her.

“Oh no you don’t, you’re still sick,” she said, backing off, her eyebrows raised and hands in front of her, warding me away.

“Just for that comment, I’m going to make sure this gets passed onto you!” I surged forward and wrapped my arms around my mum, holding onto her tightly as possible, noticing how thin she had gotten. “Love you, mum.”

“Love you too, Gee. Don’t forget it.” She pulled away, “But I really do have to go.”

She picked up the small bag on the table and gestured to the microwave, “Breakfast in there, pancakes. Bye Gee.”

She opened the door to the cold morning air and departing with a finalising click, leaving me with a near silent house.

I spit my tooth paste into the kitchen sink and turned the radio on. Just to hide the silence that still sometimes lurked like an unwelcome visitor in my house.

_You like to watch,_   
_We like to use,_   
_And we were born to loose._

Nope. Silence is better than that bitter memory. But even as I moved to turn the radio off, I heard a resounding knock on the door, another noise piercing through the stillness.

I walked over the door, opening it without checking who was standing behind it, and found myself faced with someone entirely familiar.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked harshly, and the faint smile that had been glued to Frank’s face waved and sunk like a ship hit a fast moving torpedo.

“I – I came to apologise. I should’ve stood by you,” Frank said, and his eyes slowly descended to the ground.  
 _A feather light kiss, a whispered promise. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m not letting you go again, okay?”_

“Shit Frankie, why? Why now?” I asked. He reached his hand forward, pressing his palm to my chest. His face was marked with lines of thought, he chewed on his lip.

“Because I finally knew everything. I could move on by choice but I knew deep within me that, always, my choice should’ve been you and I should never have let you go that night. I should’ve fought for you,” His eyes rose and met mine, a murky pool of sadness and regret, “I missed you every single day. With the band, being in the band, I couldn’t see you stand there, with _her_ ,” Frank spat out her name, disgust and hatred filling his voice, making it harsh, “and know I could never have you. When it didn’t work out with Jamia, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing both of you. It should never have come to this.”

I stood there, processing the new information.

“Who told you?” I asked, leaning forward to the warm hand still resting on my chest.

“Donna. All of us, last night. You don’t remember?”

I thought back to the blurs of people I saw last night and yes, it made sense. The ex-bandmates standing there, with looks of revulsion on their faces as they heard Donna speak to them. Not at me, or her, but at themselves; but for the way they had acted towards me, I realised.

“Yes. I do.”

Frank looked hopefully up at me.

“Did you mean it? When you tweeted that you loved me?” Frank’s eyes were hypnotising, capturing mine and staring straight into my soul. Surely he could see how I still felt?

“Yes. I did.”

He breathed in suddenly, and I could feel everything. A tsunami of sensations flooded me. The cold morning air hitting my bare skin, which was breaking out into goose bumps. The heat of Frank’s palm on my chest through my tshirt. The sunlight bombarding me with light as it slammed into my face. The school and work morning traffic filling my ears.

My blood felt like it had unfrozen in my veins and the tight bands that had been loosening slowly around my chest dropped, finally allowing me to breath.

“I do too.”

I reached up and cupped his face, cradling it as though it was more precious than anything and I rested my forehead on his, breathing in his smell, familiar and new at the same time.

“Daddy? Who’s that?” I heard B speak from behind me, voice still hoarse.

I turned my head and slipped my hand around to fall at  the back of Frank’s neck, gripping loosely there and I saw Bandit standing there in her custom-made doom patrol pajamas, and her ridiculous bed-hair, holding her teddy in one hand and clutching at the fabric around her stomach with her other.

“Doom patrol PJs? Wish my parents had been as cool as you,” Frank sighed, but started to detangle himself from me. I held onto him tighter.

“Hey B, you feeling okay?” I asked, and she nodded back, sleepily. “To answer your earlier question, this is Frank. He’s gonna be staying around for a little while. Hopefully a long while though. You okay with that?”

“Yeah,” she yawned, moved her hand from her stomach to suck on her thumb absently, in the way only a child could do. Before I could scold her for it, she asked, “In the way mummy should have?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I felt Frank smile into my neck where his head rested.

“I – I hope so B,” I replied, looking down at Frank’s head on my shoulder, “Why don’t you go and get a couple more hours sleep? I need to phone school and say you’re going to be off again today and me and Frank need to have a talk.”

She looked at me solemnly, nodded once, glanced at Frank, and turned and walked back the way she had come.

“Don’t think that this means everything is fixed,” I said to him, “We have a fuck-ton of crap to sort out.”

“Yeah,” He agreed, looking up seriously, his eyes meeting mine and my heart thumped, “But I’d really love to just enjoy the moment.”

I could still hear my last song playing softly in the background, but for once I felt like I could deal with what it meant and my thoughts and feelings. Frank was helping my hold back the tidal wave and once more, like I did many years ago, I felt at peace with myself and all my faults. They were still there, and this relationship would need a lot of work. My depression wasn't a quick fix, but this might have been the final push that I had needed.

**The End.**


End file.
